|
18 jun 06 "Will any or all of the following names get my future child beat up in school?" i like those! canola, keannu, koi-koi, machai, clayton, dynamic and machmoud. can't lose -- they, in fact, will administer the beat-downs on the banal mary-sue's, robert's, and jack's of the schoolyard. when i was little, i figured that kids' names had a lot to do with their popularity and coolness. i even once told some other 3rd grader that the principal reason he was cool was that he had a cool name; maybe it was something like "rick savage." a lot of people share this opinion, i think, including the question-asker. i don't totally agree anymore, but i do think that an unusual name draws undue attention to a kid, so that if he's cool, you notice him. if he's the class scum, you notice him. if he's a hallway wallflower (like me), then you (sort of) notice him. a weird name amplifies coolness or uncoolness -- if he's one of these, then the weird name will make him more so. i happen to know that the baby-to-be of this questioner is a "him", by the way. i am nothing if not PC. public school is really an awful thing. i wish i had been home-schooled, or just put in deep-freeze 'till age 18. children are so viscious that only the most mentally healthy and socially intelligent children should be exposed to the melee. i was (haha, "was") insane, sensitive, wimpy and autistic, and often didn't fare well. i used to wear sweatpants with visible food dribble stains, a flannel button-down shirt tucked into them, and high-top basketball sneakers. my hair was unwashed and uncombed. i was about 7 feet tall in 6th grade. i talked like that kid with the blonde mullet in the old "encyclopedia britannica" commercials; think "media depiction of nerd." getting back to the reader's question, i'd say none of those, necessarily, but if i had to pick a beatdown-inducer, i'd have to go with "kanoa," just because it sounds the most gender-ambiguous. now, the reader is going to email me with "BUT THAT WAS MY FAVORITE". just you watch. but remember, if your child is uncool to begin with and has a weird name, the beat-downs he receives will be made extra-special. if he's cool via other merits, his weirdo-name will boost his coolness to extra-stellar proportions. it's a lose-win situation, i'm afraid; not a lot of middle ground here. i tend to like this trend of made-up or at least ethnic-and-unusual names. many african americans have been doing it from at least a generation back. i remember a nurse i had at the hospital whose name was "vascythia" (vuh-SEE-thee-ah). as she explained, her mother loved forscythias, and named her daughter a phonetic approximation of one (say "forscythia" really fast with an ebonic accent). this technique helps to exlain "anfernee." but anyway, i think odd names are generally good, if not only because they eliminate cultural baggage and associations, regardless of snotty weird parent who just wants to be different. just kidding, seriously. this is extremely interesting -- the list of the most popular boy, girl names for 2005 (source):
19th century hebrew school, sorta. i predicted that this would happen eventually. i am the seer. so yes -- go ahead, dear reader, and name your child "bopinderton"; he'll write thanks from prison. |
ask a question